Every once in a while wine-searcher.com digs into its extensive database and produces some interesting lists.  Two such lists recently caught our eye: the world’s 50 most expensive wines and the world’s 10 best value wines. Of course one of our first thoughts was where the U.S. wound up in each of these categories. 

In terms of the most expensive wines, only one U.S. wine, Screaming Eagle (duh) made the list.  According to wine-searcher the average price for Mr. Eagle worldwide is $2,507 per 750ml bottle. Not surprisingly, the rest of the priciest wines came from Europe with France dominating with 46, or 92%, of the labels. Just think: if Henri Jayer were to allocate his Richebourg, the lucky members on the list would be shelling out an average of $16,483 per bottle…

Now to the world’s best value wines.  Wine-searcher took international wine critic scores and, on a points-per-dollar basis, picked the top 10 wines for each of four price categories:  $10, $20, $40, and $80. So which countries provide the best quality-to-price ratio (QPR) for highly rated wines?  Spain came out on top followed by a four-way tie with Australia, Austria, Italy and South Africa.  And how did the U.S. fare?  Only two U.S. wines made the list, and both of those are from Washington State. 

So what’s the take-away here?  Some industry observers point out that California doesn’t have many good, under $20 per bottle wines but does well in the higher price brackets.  The wine-searcher analysis argues otherwise, showing that we are pretty lean compared to the rest of the world up to and including the $80 price point.

Are our wines overpriced or does the analysis miss something?  Let us know what you think.